Titanfall is kind of mysterious. You might think that’s a weird statement given the game’s recent beta, or considering how prolific the game has been at trade shows over the past year, but I’m being sincere. The game is just a little over two weeks away from release and there’s still a lot of stuff we don’t know.
Let me give you an example. I recently got my hands on the official artbook for the game and I wasn’t more than two pages in before I stumbled upon this puzzling line in the book’s introduction by the game’s director Steve Fukuda:
“Wall running ninjas? Check. Giant robots? Check. Warping spaceships? Check. Dinosaurs? Of course.”
I’ll bet if you’ve been following the game casually there’s a surprising word in there for you. The term dinosaurs seems to be somewhat hyperbolic, of course “wall running ninjas” isn’t quite accurate either. Nevertheless amongst The Art Of Titanfall’s nearly 200 pages there’s more than a few surprises.
Respawn has been fairly quiet about what exactly the game’s campaign would be, or even if there would be one at all. First we found out that there wouldn’t be any kind of single player mode available, but at the same time we’d seen some footage from demos that looked to have been ripped straight out of what a single player mode would look like. Did they scrap it completely? Well from the look of things, not quite.
The lore of Titanfall is a lot more complete than you might have been lead to believe. The book has about 12 pages dedicated to characters who clearly have some pretty detailed backstories written about them. What role they play in the game is still a little up in the air but if you assumed this game was going to be nothing but deathmatches it’s looking like you may be mistaken.
So how about those dinosaurs? Well there are only a few pages devoted to the bizarre monsters that inhabit the different planets of the Frontier, but from the look of it they seem to be fairly formidable and potentially dangerous enemies. Artist Tu Bai provides this passage explaining the creatures a bit more:
“From the beginning we wanted to have exotic creatures inhabit our worlds. Some will walk or fly around levels harmlessly until people interfere. Others will attack when you just stare at them.”
The book’s biggest chunk of content is reserved for showcasing the game’s different locations. When the beta launched some crafty users over at NeoGAF mined the game to pull a list of levels that would supposedly be in the final product. Their list a bit fatter than what’s featured in the book but a lot of the names line up with the locations showcased. Here’s a full list of the levels I can all but confirm for the game:
- Angel City
- Outpost 207
- Fracture
- Demeter
- Colony
- Boneyard
- Corporate
- Overlook
- Nexus
- Airbase
- Lagoon
Concept art detailing the interior of a Titan.
The book is published (fittingly) by Titan Books, and as with all their releases the quality is top notch. The book comes with a dust jacket and the pages are fully colored on some very nice thick high gloss paper. Some have wondered if this would be the same book that’s included in the woefully priced collector’s edition of the game. Although the collector’s edition showcases a different cover the description and sample pages seem to line up, so if you missed out on the collector’s edition then you can at least still enjoy the same (or at the very least incredibly similar) art book. If you’re like me and you’re a sucker for video game art books and giant robots this will almost certainly be worth snagging when it releases on February 25th.
